Nerd News: “Kissing Lips” And An Extra Set Of Hands

Every Friday we like to run down the latest discoveries in health, technology, space, and more. Get your nerd news fill here!

INVENTION
In long-distance dating news:  A $40 kissing device out of China went viral this week.  It attaches to your phone, and lets you kiss people remotely by making out with a set of rubber lips.  A similar gadget made the rounds in 2016.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra set of hands to help around the house?  Researchers at Cambridge think it might actually be possible . . . literally, a second set of robotic arms attached to your body that you control. They’ve already got a prototype for a second thumb that attaches to your hand.  600 people tried it, and 98% were able to use it within the first minute.

 

HEALTH

A study at the University of Florida found that certain chemicals in toilet paper could potentially give you cancer.  (Well that’s crappy news.)

The next step for computers might be lab-grown mini-brains made of actual brain tissue.  The idea is to link clumps of human brain cells together to form a new type of computer chip.  They’re calling it “organoid intelligence.”

 

SPACE

Remember when NASA crashed a satellite into an asteroid last fall to see if they could change its orbit?  They confirmed this week that it worked so well, we could probably do the same thing to stop one from hitting the Earth.  But we’d need to spot it years ahead of time.

And in other asteroid news:  A silly report last week compared the size of an asteroid in Texas to a Welsh corgi.  Now it looks like the writer is in on the joke.  He just compared the size of another asteroid to 14 flamingos.